Plastic pollution in the sea off Bali

British diver Rich Horner has filmed the level of plastic pollution in the sea off Bali. 

Anyone who still believes plastic pollution is not a problem, that we do not need a latte levy to eliminate plastic-lined paper cups, that plastic is not a modern day curse or that we do not need to to eliminate plastic, watch these films and think again. Surprise, surprise there weren’t many mantas at the cleaning station. The dive took place in an area frequented by manta rays which come to get cleaned. The area lies off the coast of Nusa Penda  a small island with low population — there is a stretch of only 20 kilometers of water separating Nusa Penda from the island of Bali and its capital Denpasar. The beaches of Bali are covered in plastic, the sea full of plastic. The plastic breaks down into microscopic plastic, marine life cannot distinguish from plankton, eat the plankton. The weight of plastic equals that of plankton. Seabirds and sea turtles are eating larger pieces of plastic. They die, their stomachs full of plastic. By 2050, the weight of plastic in the sea will equal the weight of fish. Our first visible sign of the problem is litter dropped on the bus, in our streets, plastic covering our beaches, which finds it way into the sea. Bali's famous beaches like Kuta and Legian beaches are being buried by up to 60 tones of plastic rubbish each day. Worse, this is becoming an annual reality owing to weather patterns like monsoons and inefficient waste management leading to a worldwide marine pollution crisis Similar scenes have dismayed beachgoers further north at Kuta, Seminyak and Canggu since the start of the year. The disaster was made worse by the washed-up remains of four endangered Olive Ridley turtles and a nearly 14-metre (46-foot) long  Bryde’s whale that were thought to have died after ingesting plastic waste. “This is not our rubbish. It comes from over there,” Putu, one of hundreds of local residents who spent the day sorting, collecting and burning trash on Jimbaran Bay, told Al Jazeera while pointing east at the sea. “It comes from Java,” added Made, another man raking the sand, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name. Bali’s tidal rubbish problem is an annual event caused in part by monsoon weather that blows marine pollution from the densely populated neighbouring island of Java – Indonesia’s economic engine. The country is one of the worst marine polluters in the world, accounting for 1.3 million of the eight million tonnes of plastic that ends up in the ocean every year, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“Every year the ocean current pattern in the Bali Strait will impact the west coast of Bali. When the seawater in the Bali Strait has garbage, it will be carried to the beach,” said Gede Hendra wan, head of the Marine Computation Laboratory at Bali’s Udayana University. “This issue has been happening for almost a decade.